


Try you on and wear you home

by MsPeppernose



Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Peterick, i wrote this during my last two days in my job when I had nothing to do
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-18
Updated: 2014-11-18
Packaged: 2018-02-26 04:20:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2637836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MsPeppernose/pseuds/MsPeppernose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Patrick is a sales assistant in a clothing store who is good at saving Pete from his wardrobe malfunctions</p>
            </blockquote>





	Try you on and wear you home

**Author's Note:**

> Rated T for some swearing and also for nipples...

~Pete~  
Pete isn't late but he might be if people don't get out of his way. Why is there so many people around today? He has a first date and it's just plain rude to be late on a first date. He speeds up his pace a little and tries to manoeuvre around people as he heads towards where he's meeting his date. It's a date set up by a friend of his, he's only sort of into it. He's met the guy once before but only briefly, they've been texting on and off all week and they get on just fine. But he's reserving judgement on whether they will get along until after they've spent an evening together. He's learned the hard way not to get his hopes up too high for a perfect first date.

By the time Pete is close to their rendezvous point, it looks likely that he's actually going to be a few minutes early if he rushes. He's not known for his punctuality so he feels sort of proud to get there at least on time. He quickly rounds the corner of the street where he's meeting his date and walks straight into man that could easily be described as a human brick wall. The force nearly knocks Pete off his feet, but worse than that, his fresh and clean white shirt is now a coffee coloured and soaking wet mess. Fantastic. Pete wants to yell all of the expletives he can think of as he assesses just how bad he looks, peeling the sodden shirt away from his chest and letting it slap back against his skin, - at least it wasn’t scalding hot, just lukewarm - but when he keys himself up to let loose his grievance, he turns around the human brick wall has walked off. Pete grits his teeth, what a fucking jerk! Any effort he made to look decent before he left his house has flown straight out the window.

He checks the time on his phone and curses under his breath. There's no way he can make it home in time, and if he cancels with such a lame excuse as a dirty shirt, his date is as good as over anyway. 

He thinks for a second and then texts his date to say that he’s en-route but will be delayed just a few moments. It's better to be five minutes late than show up looking like garbage, right? He’s all apologies and hopes he won’t be hated for it. He makes a run for it, down the street and into the nearest clothing store he can find.

*

~Patrick~  
The store is quiet, and good thing too because it’s ten minutes until closing time. The last thing that Patrick wants was some stragglers who decide that now is the right time to browse their entire selection of hoodies from start to finish, maybe trying on a few, and then leave twenty minutes after the store was due to close without spending a single penny. Patrick hates those sorts of customers. They’re the ones who haven’t really got much regard that retail staff might have something better to do with their lives than wait around after closing time.

Joe left earlier so he’s on his own for the end of the day and the close up. He never minds that, they usually take turns. And if he’s closing it means that Joe opened and that means a tiny bit more sleep than usual. Always a bonus.

Patrick does a quick circle of the shop surveying any damage or disorder left by the last group of high schoolers that had been in. They spent the guts of an hour trying things on, shrieking with laughter and whispering when any boy entered the shop, or whenever Patrick looked in their general direction. They then only purchased a single, solitary shirt between the four of them. He didn’t mind that though, high school students were usually polite even if they were a little on the messy side. Plus, on quiet days, the extra folding and clearing up the mess they made gave him something to do besides count down the minutes to closing time and his escape.

He’s just about to begin closing up the shop when a frantic guy enters the shop like a whirlwind. He looks as though he’s been running, or rushing at least. He has slightly flushed cheeks and a sheen of sweat on his forehead.

Patrick now has a dilemma; let the guy in to look around and risk being stuck in the shop forever while he maybe purchases something, or be gently forceful and tell him that the store is closing. He’s in a decent mood so Patrick decides to be nice. It’s good for his karma, he thinks. It doesn’t harm the guy’s chances that he’s super cute.

“Hey. Um. We’re closing very soon. But is there anything I can help with?”  
“Yeah. Sorry. I just need a new shirt.” The guy gestures to his own shirt which has a large coffee stain all down the front. He looks like a Starbucks attacked him. “I just need anything that’s not covered in coffee. This asshole just knocked his drink all over me. And uh…” The guy trails off as he heads to a folded stack of brightly coloured shirts just behind Patrick. He skims through them but only spends half a minute doing so. He holds one up, briefly checks the tag. “This one is fine. Can I put it on here? Please?” He looks desperate.

Patrick hesitates, but he’s had similar requests before. He had a girl once come out of the dressing room wearing her purchase before asking him to scan her while she was still wearing it so that she could wear it home. “Sure. Dressing rooms are just there.” The guys shoulders relax like he’s relieved. He beams at Patrick's response, and Patrick feels a little butterfly flutter around in his tummy at the crinkles that appear around the guys eyes. It’s a heart-warming smile, and between that and the guys impossibly dark eyes, Patrick would be happy to give him anything he wanted. The guy rips the price tag off of the shirt and hands it to Patrick. "You’ve pretty much saved my life. If you wanna ring it up while I put it on, it might save time? I don’t want to keep you.”

“It’s cool.” Patrick genuinely doesn’t mind. There’s still several minutes before he would have locked the door anyway. And he feels like helping the guy out might be his good deed for the day. He's a regular knight in shining armour.

There’s really no need for Patrick to ring up the sale while the guy is changing, ringing up a sale takes about three seconds. Patrick stands at the register and eyes the dressing room, waiting. When the guy emerges, he looks infinitely more relaxed in his fresh shirt. He’s grinning at Patrick and does a slow twirl, showing himself off. “Is it ok?”

Is it ok, Patrick wonders. Yes, the guy looks great. In fact, Patrick would go as far to describe him as looking rather gorgeous in it. The shirt is soft cotton in a bright purple colour that suits his olive skin tone and his deep brown eyes perfectly. “Looks great.” And it really does.

“Thank you for your help. You really saved my life.”

“No problem, all part of the service.” He smiles at the guy, hoping he’ll get one of those wide, crinkly-eyed smiles in return. He does, and his stomach butterfly seems to have multiplied into several little crazy fluttery things now.

The guy leans in closer. “I have a date; I didn’t want to go to it smelling of old coffee, even if it was a caramel latte. I owe you.” Before the smile can drop off of Patrick's face at the realisation that he just helped the hot guy look even hotter for his date with some (lucky) person, he's is stuffing his change into the front pocket for his jeans and heading for the door with a little wave to Patrick.

When he’s gone, Patrick sighs and closes the store as normal, cashing up the register, setting the alarm and locking up the front shutters, pointedly not letting himself feel disappointed that a stranger has a date and it’s not with him. It’s possible he needs one of those date things too at some point in the near future. Maybe then he could stop day-dreaming over cute customers.

*

~Pete~  
Pete's date is a total flop. He may as well have worn the coffee stained shirt for all the difference it would have made. His date is not a jerk as such, he's just more into himself than he's into Pete, and it sort of makes for a boring evening. While he hadn't put much weight on it being a perfect date, he's still disappointed that it wasn't great. He had been looking forward to meeting someone nice, someone he had something in common with. He wanted to date, and smile, and flirt and be sickeningly adorable with someone. Just not this particular someone.

He spends the week brooding, and maybe planning how he's going to become a hermit. He could adopt, like, fifty cats and be Pete, The Crazy Cat Guy.

Eventually he decides to cheer himself up and distract himself from his godawful and non-existent love life by getting himself some new things. Maybe some new music and an awesome new hoody will do the trick.

*

~Patrick~  
Patrick is having a super busy day at work. Joe is rushed off his feet too, and the day is passing quickly. Patrick has a whole box full of new stock to unpack, fold and stack on the shelves, and a whole heap of sale hoodies to mark down. He’s in his own little world, sorting and folding and working, and he hums along to the store playlist. The music isn’t particularly loud but it means that it’s hard to hear anything happening at the other end of the shop.

"Hello?" Patrick thinks he hears a voice coming from the dressing room area, so he stops what he’s doing and tries to listen. He hears nothing but the background music, so he goes back to his work. He sorts the shirts into piles according to colour, and into sizes within those piles starting with the largest and ending with the smallest on top. It’s sort of therapeutic doing such methodical work and he can pretty much switch his brain off. He cranes his neck towards the dressing rooms when he hears a voice again, slightly louder this time. The tone of the voice is slightly panicked but also amused.

“Hello?” Patrick calls again in the general direction of the voice. There’s no one there that he can see, so it’s either someone in the changing rooms, or the shop is haunted. But as much as the shop being haunted would be really cool, he’s sure it’s more likely to be a person.

“Hey. Ok, do you work here? This is embarrassing,” the voice says, “but I’m sort of stuck.”  
“Stuck?”  
“Yeah. I tried on a shirt and it’s too small. I got the wrong size. But it’s also caught on my piercing. Can you help, please?”

Patrick is unsure what to do. This hasn’t really happened before. He stares at the closed curtain of the dressing room. He’s seen people bring their friends into dressing rooms with them to help try things on, but a person asking him to help them is new. All he can see is the end of a pair of jeans and some battered high-top sneakers peeking underneath it. “OK,” he says tentatively. He’s not really sure what he’s going to see when he peels back the curtain. He hesitates when his fingers brush the heavy velvet. “Will I come in?”

“Yeah, you’re going to have to.”

Patrick pulls back the curtain slowly. Before him is a tanned, inked and bare torso with arms and a head caught in a red shirt. It's one of those shirts that's designed to look distressed and old even though it's brand spanking new, so it has little holes all over it. It would be easy for it to get stuck on something like a piercing. Patrick looks to see where it's caught, and oh god. When the guy said it was caught on his piercing, Patrick wasn't really expecting it to be caught on a nipple piercing. He's not sure how exactly to go about it, but he's pretty sure he's going to have to touch this man's nipple to free him. Jesus Christ. Patrick feels like the temperature in the dressing room has just gone up by at least fifty degrees.

Patrick tells himself that it's just a nipple, it's fine, no need to freak out. Everyone has nipples, no big deal, he can totally be a grown up about this. "Ok. I'm going to unhook the shirt off of your...um...piercing." He can't actually bring himself to say nipple, it feels very intimate. He reaches his thumb and finger to the little silver ring and in doing so his finger brushes the guys chest. He jumps a little and Patrick snatches his hand away, quick-smart.

"Sorry." The shirt-covered person says. "Just got a fright."

Although Patrick wants to run and maybe get Joe to help, (Joe is braver than he is), he reaches again and works the fabric from around the piercing. "Done," Patrick says, though his voice sounds strange, and probably a little more breathless than it should be. The shirt that the guy is trying on is fire-engine red, but Patrick knows that by now his face is probably an even more fetching shade of crimson. 

When the guy can finally pull the shirt all the way over his head to free himself, Patrick is face to face with a wide grin he’s seen before. It's the coffee-stained shirt guy from the previous week. He's grinning despite the fact that he just embarrassed himself beyond anything Patrick could handle if it was him, and despite the fact that he is now standing shirtless and squashed into a dressing room with someone he doesn't know.

"Thanks! I'm free!" he jokes and Patrick is frozen in place with an idiotic grin on his face. He's jammed into a relatively small space with a very attractive man, who's both half dressed and smiling at him. And Patrick just sort of felt him up, even if it wasn't meant in that way. Patrick desperately tries to not look at the nipple ring again. Like if he doesn't look at it, it won't be quiet as insanely hot as it really seems. He points towards the curtain to indicate that he's going to leave. He's certain that he knew lots of words from the English language just a few moments ago, he was actually fluent. But now he's mute. All he manages to say is, "you had a date." Not very smooth.

"I did. An awful date." The guy stands there with a half smile, and Patrick takes his queue to leave. He slides out of the dressing room and pulls the curtain shut behind him. When there's a plush velvet curtain between him and what just happened, Patrick lets out the big deep breath he's been holding, and hopes the thick fabric of the curtain absorbs some of the sound.

Joe gives him a look and crinkles his brow in confusion. Patrick just shakes his head. "Don't ask," he mouths and heads towards the register. Maybe he can hide there for a few minutes.

*

~Pete~  
Pete pulls his own shirt back on, leaving the offending too-small shirt on the hook beside the mirror. As embarrassing as that situation had just been, he'd felt more embarrassed at how flustered he'd gotten when the very cute sales assistant had touched his bare skin to help him out of the shirt. He had flinched and actually shivered when the fingers touched him. He mentally crosses his own fingers and hopes he'd played it cool enough to get away with it, that maybe he hadn't noticed.

He checks himself out in the mirror. He looks alright. He fixes his hair which is all askew and standing up in twenty different angles from being caught up in his shirt. He sweeps a fingertip under his eyes to smudge what's left of yesterday's eyeliner, and ok, that didn't really get messed up when he was stuck in the shirt but there's no harm checking if he looks good. He straightens his shirt one last time, picks up the one he got trapped in, and tells himself to stay cool. He then heads back out to the other side of the velvet curtain.

“God! Thanks again! That was embarrassing, but it would have been worse if you hadn’t have saved me. I imagined having to wander the store, trapped in a shirt. That’s twice you rescued me.” He looks at Patrick's name tag, “Patrick. I’m Pete, by the way,” though then Pete feels a bit silly for introducing himself, there’s probably no need for the sales guy to know all of his customers names. Then again, he probably hasn’t had to rescue all of his customers repeatedly.

“Like I said before, it’s all part of the service.” Patrick smiles at him, and Pete can't help the little twist of warmth in his insides that comes with it. "Did you want to take the shirt?”  
“Yeah, but maybe in a better size?" He smiles again. "And I might wear it without the ring in next time." He absentmindedly touches his hand to his own chest, and sees Patrick's eyes flicker to where the piercing is, then back up to meet Pete's gaze. When Patrick smiles at him, Pete pretty much wants to melt into a puddle of the floor.  
"I'm going to have another look around," he tells Patrick, and off he goes to browse.

Somewhere between the dressing room and the register, Pete makes a decision to be a bit shameless about the whole thing. There’s no harm done, and this Patrick guy seems cute. Pete wants to flirt a little , maybe the flirting he hasn't gotten to do on his crappy dates lately, but without actually harassing the staff of what might now be his favourite clothing store.

 

~Patrick~  
Patrick watches as Pete browses the racks of hoodies and shirts, stopping at the odd one or two to pull it up to check out the design or the price tag. He rounds the shop slowly, taking his time to look at almost all of the large selection of merchandise. Patrick is trying his best not to stare at him, not to creep him out. Whenever their eyes meet, Pete smiles at Patrick, and he really can’t help but return the smiles, still trying not to be creepy.

“Um. I’m just going to try another shirt on. And this hoody too.” Pete holds up a few pieces of clothing and gestures towards the dressing rooms and Patrick just nods at him as he heads into a cubicle and pulls the curtain shut behind him.

Patrick wants to say, "don't get stuck again", but he's afraid it will come off at laughing at Pete, rather than cute and friendly. So he keeps his mouth shut and busies himself, he goes back to what he was doing, folding and sorting and pricing. When he hears Pete's voice from the dressing room again, he assumes he’s imagining it. Surely there’s no way that someone could get trapped inside two different shirts in one afternoon, in the same shop?

“Patrick?" he says. OK, Patrick definitely heard it that time.  
“Are you ok?” Patrick asks, and abandons his folding once again. “Are you stuck again?” It’s hard to keep the amusement out of his voice, because really, if this guy is stuck again it’s becoming a bit ridiculous.  
“No. But can I ask you something?” When Patrick looks at the dressing room, the curtain is pulled half back and Pete is not stuck, thankfully. He’s dressed in the shirt he had picked out. It’s a slim fitting jet black shirt with white spiral designs down the front. The dark fabric looks beautiful on his skin and makes all the black lines of his ink stand out. He looks amazing, though Patrick is starting to think that Pete could wear a trash bag and still look edible.

"Is it ok?" Pete asks, just like the fist time he visited the shop and asked a Patrick his opinion.  
"You look amazing." Patrick gushes, and he knows that was probably more enthusiastic than he should be to a customer, but he reckons that line was crossed when he had to touch Pete's nipple piercing anyway.  
"Amazing?" Pete's voice lowers, and Patrick moves forward without really meaning to. He's inside the little dressing room with Pete again now, and theres just a foot of air between them.  
"Yeah. I mean. It looks great. You look great."

~Pete~  
When Patrick says he looks great, Pete just decided to go for it, and hopes that it won't result in him being forcibly ejected from the store by security, or the cops for that matter. He reaches one hand to the velvet curtain and draws it closed. It's him and Patrick inside the little dressing room and once the curtain is closed over, Pete pretends that the rest of the store, the rest of the world, doesn't exist for just a moment. He hopes one last time that he's read the signs correctly; Patrick's blushing and smiling and his extra helpfulness. And god he's so cute, he just has to kiss him.

Pete leans forward and in less than a heartbeat his lips are on Patrick's. Thankfully he must have read Patrick correctly, or at the very least he has luck on his side, because Patrick is kissing him back. Pete feels him pushing back against his lips, and the kisses are slow but determined. Pete's head swims, and he has to grab a handful of Patrick's shirt just for something to hold on to. Patrick places the palms of his hands to Pete's hips and opens his mouth to him, and then their tongues meet. Pete exhales a soft, breathy, almost-moan against Patrick, which makes him pull back a little. They probably shouldn't get too carried away in a dressing room, he doesn't want to get Patrick fired. And he knows that with the way Patrick is kissing him, it would be very, very easy to get carried away. Pete kisses him again, soft and sweet, and then moves away.

"So. I hope that was ok?" Pete asks, but by Patrick's frantic nodding, he knows it was. He tugs on the hem of the shirt he's wearing. "I should probably get changed again?" 

Patrick disappears back outside and Pete grins at his reflection. He feels like a cheeky fucker, but a badass cheeky fucker. He changes back into his own shirt and leaves the dressing room with a bounce in his step, heading straight for the register where Patrick is looking adorable and red-cheeked.

"I'll take this one." He hands Patrick the black shirt he'd just been wearing while kissing Patrick. "And this one too," he says, passing over the red shirt with all the little holes in it. Patrick puts the sale through the register and hands Pete his receipt. "If I get stuck in it at home, I'm going to have to call you to help me out again." Pete smiles, and Patrick is the cutest fucking thing ever when he smiles back. Pete thinks for a second. While he's being brazen and kissing strange boys in dressing rooms, he may as well continue. He grabs a pen from the countertop and scribbles his cell phone number on the back of the receipt that Patrick had handed him, then thrusts it at Patrick. "Here. So you can call me and give me your number. In case I get stuck in the shirt again." He actually wants to say *so you can get me out of my shirt again* but changes his mind at the last second.

He heads for the door, past the other guys that works there who's just staring at Patrick dumbfounded. He turns and gives Patrick a little wave before heading home feeling giddy and full of butterflies; a feeling that no amount of money can buy.

~Patrick~  
Things like this don't usually happen to Patrick, but this might just be the best day he's had in work in a long time.

END


End file.
